Word came in that a nine-year-old boy had drowned on the Middle Delaware just as we were finishing up this editorial on water safety. The boy, who was fishing, slipped and fell into the water. His family and a boat passing by tried to rescue him. He was not wearing a lifejacket.

Who does, when they’re fishing from the river’s banks?

Well, hopefully more of us will, and we will help spread the word, especially as our region becomes more and more popular. Read more

Last weekend’s Upper Delaware BioBlitz on a 63.5-acre wildlife preserve near Starlight, PA got us thinking about the value of biodiversity. This bioblitz was an inventory of as many species—animals, plants, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, insects, fungi and other life—as teams of biologists and volunteers could find and identify in 24 hours. [See Scott Rando’s feature article and photos on page 24.] Read more

On June 15th I was handed a piece of paper stating that I had successfully graduated high school. In my eyes it was meant to stand for accomplishment, hard work and liberation, but I saw nothing but a piece of paper. My four years of high school cannot be paraphrased with paper and ink, cannot be hung above the fireplace. There were days I didn’t think I would make it through; there were days I never wanted to end; you can’t commemorate that by handing me a piece of laminated paper. Read more

The clock is ticking in Pennsylvania (PA) for state government to decide whether to accept federal funds to expand Medicaid to cover an estimated 613,000 uninsured Pennsylvanians now eligible under Obamacare, aka the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), which will be fully implemented nationwide in 2014. As this month winds down, PA lawmakers are working to complete a state budget for the coming fiscal year, and what the budget looks like in the end will depend on whether there is an influx of federal Medicaid funds or not. Read more

Last week, Connecticut’s legislature did the right thing when it passed a bill (the vote was 134 to 3) requiring food manufacturers to label products that contain genetically modified (GM) ingredients. Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy indicated he would sign the bill into law, making Connecticut the first state in the nation to pass such broad legislation. Read more

Recently we read with great interest Sullivan County Legislative Chair Scott Samuelson’s State of the County Report, in which he called for sustainable economic development to be the foundation for our future. We agree that sustainable development is a necessity, but not everyone agrees on the term’s meaning. As we see it, without environmental preservation factored in, no economic development plan can be truly sustainable. Read more

The noisy return of the cicadas got us thinking. These insects that are making news these days have lived underground for 17 long years, emerging for only a portion of one short summer to mate and start their kind’s unusual lifecycle all over. The next generation of these cicadas won’t emerge again until 2030. Read more

A man who is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent can very likely be called a man of good character, a man of integrity. Chances are he may have learned these ideals in the Boy Scouts. These qualities, which a scout strives to embody, comprise the Scout Law. With the Scout Oath, the youth further pledges to “do my best to do my duty to God and my country... Read more

Campaign finance reform has been moved to the front burner in New York State (NYS) in recent weeks. Little wonder, in light of a number of elected officials involved in political corruption scandals that have rocked Albany lately. Read more

Since taking office in 2012, the new mix of Sullivan County legislators has been working hard to improve government fiscal accountability by reining in expenses, ferreting out waste and redundancy, and by trying to deliver more value to citizens for the taxes they pay. Read more